Multi-faceted Petaluma writer keeps history alive

Jack Withington doggedly researches the forgotten stories of Petaluma’s past|

Throughout his childhood, Jack Withington often sat mesmerized while listening to the colorful and descriptive stories being told by his parents, grandparents, friends and neighbors, regarding the plight of their early lives, immigrating to America and assimilating into Petaluma’s rural community. Several of the stories originated from obscure events, and some are unpleasant in content. But as Withington grew older, they stuck in his memory along with his own personal experiences.

As a writer motivated by a strong desire to document the historically accurate, but less common, human interest stories which are often overlooked - and to reveal insight into the personal lives of those who lived them - Withington began writing observant stories and articles on a wide range of subjects, which he keeps organized in thick binders on a shelf.

“I love telling the stories that weren’t in the news, or were quickly forgotten, local stories that weren’t being told,” said Withington. His stories have appeared in local historical journals and magazines and as a contributor to “First to Go,” the history of Marine Corps Combat Correspondents.

His book, “Historical Buildings of Sonoma County: A Pictorial Story of Yesterday’s Rural Structures,” written by Withington and featuring Ron Parenti’s photographs of this region’s unique agricultural buildings, is a handy publication for anyone looking for a definitive description of our rustic architectural past. The book introduces readers to old structures, and explains their uses and how those uses have often changed. He examines various types of barns, social halls and granges that we often don’t look closely at, and describes dairies, ranches, colony houses, tank houses and outhouses.

Born in 1940, Withington was raised on a Penngrove chicken ranch, along with his brothers Bob, Jim and Tony, and sister Dorothy. His father, Norman Withington, was an ex-Merchant Marine and Coast Guardsman, and his mother, Edith, was the daughter of Petaluma chicken ranchers and labor leaders Isaac and Anna Epstein.

Norman Withington was living with his wife and young family in San Francisco, and working on the waterfront in 1942, when he was offered the opportunity to come to Petaluma to manage a meat bird ranch on Skillman Lane in the absence of its owners, the Yamasaki family, who were sent to a Japanese internment camp. Withington managed the ranch with care until 1945, when another call notified them the family was returning home.

After the Withington’s moved to a 10-acre chicken ranch and Grade-B dairy on Petaluma Hill Road, Jack grew up chopping kale and feeding the family’s 20,000 chickens, in addition to de-beaking, vaccinating, and cleaning up after them. When the poultry industry declined, Norman Withington became a truck driver, and Jack, a 1958 Petaluma High graduate, joined the Marine Corps.

Backed by two years of high school journalism, Withington became a general assignment reporter for the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station newspaper, which offered him the opportunity to polish his writing skills and to develop unique story lines, such as his first-hand account of arriving at Cuba’s Guantanamo Naval Station during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Once discharged from the Service, Withington took a job at the Two Rock Army Base commissary where he became a meat cutter, which developed into full-time employment with Roger Wilco and Safeway supermarkets. In 1971, he opened his own shop, Withington’s Custom Meats, and with the help of his late wife, Joyce - to whom he was married for 19 years and together raised their children Lori and Andy, before her passing in 1983 - operated the shop until 1980.

He then went into the wholesale plumbing supply business until retiring.

Motivated by a thirst for knowledge, an ability to perform tireless research, plus a desire to tell local stories that weren’t well publicized, he began writing “My Stories About People, Places and Things,” a prolific and informative collection of 15 stories encompassing an interesting variety of topics and actual events he learned about as a kid, a microcosm of the provocative people who’ve made an impression on him.

Attempting to keep history alive and relevant by elaborating on them is one of Withington’s foremost intentions. In “Petaluma Young Men Went to War,” he describes two local men who volunteered to fight with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39, where one of them died.

“The Yoneda Story” explains the circumstances behind the posthumous awarding of the Congressional Gold Medal to the family of World War II veteran and chicken farmer Karl Yoneda for his service to the Military Intelligence Service.

Withington’s tragic story of a Tomales Bay boating accident, in 1930, which claimed nine lives, including five members of well-known local families, along with the more publicized “Tar and Feathers” incident of 1935, are the most heart-wrenching.

It’s important that these stories are not lost to history, and it’s noteworthy that writers like Withington value their own childhood memories enough to research and preserve them.

(Harlan Osborne’s column ‘Toolin’ Around Town’ appears every two weeks. Contact him at harlan@sonic.net)

UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy:
  • This is a family newspaper, please use a kind and respectful tone.
  • No profanity, hate speech or personal attacks. No off-topic remarks.
  • No disinformation about current events.
  • We will remove any comments — or commenters — that do not follow this commenting policy.